Post-election, cable news ratings and news website visits fall -- some precipitously

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Post-Election, The Audience Drifts Away
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 21, 2008; Page C01

Americans became smitten with the high drama of the presidential election, but the transition of power is proving less than sexy.

Ratings for cable TV news and the number of visits to news Web sites built for weeks and then peaked on Election Day, giving the electronic media some of their biggest audiences in years. But since then, TV ratings and online traffic have fallen -- in many cases precipitously -- indicating that viewers and visitors have largely quenched their thirst for political news.

The ratings rise and fall suggest that the suspense and conflict of the campaign's closing days made for a far better story than the aftermath of President-elect Barack Obama's victory and the beginnings of his administration. The lone exception was broadcast news, which has held relatively steady through November.

The most pronounced declines were in traffic at popular news Web sites, which saw a steady increase for months. The tide crested as Americans went to the polls; MSNBC.com, which has been the most popular news site for several months, had 25.1 million unique visitors during the week of the election (it also reported 471 million page views on Election Day -- a record for the site). Since then, millions of visitors have gone elsewhere, according to Nielsen Online.

MSNBC.com's traffic declined by 25 percent, or by 6.4 million unique visitors, from its election week peak. Yahoo News lost 5.2 million unique visitors (21 percent). CNN.com, which scored the most traffic during the week of the election, deflated most of all, losing one-third of its 26.9 million visitors in the post-election week.

The story was similar for the cable news networks, which for months devoted huge swaths of their airtime to politics. Viewing of Fox News, CNN and MSNBC peaked during the week of the election....After peaking with a weekly average of 3.5 million viewers during prime time during election week, Fox News lost more than a million viewers the next week. CNN saw an even larger exodus, with its peak prime-time audience of 3.3 million dropping by some 1.9 million. MSNBC shed 862,000 viewers during that period, from its peak average of 2.2 million during election week....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/20/AR2008112003755.html

[DJ13]

1. Viewers dont care about the nuts & bolts of assembling an administration

They care about potential policies the new administration might (or might not) enact to help them in their day to day life.

Rahm here, Hillary there doesnt mean much when people are losing their homes or their credit card companies have pushed their interest rates to 30% just as their job looks in doubt.

[glowing]

2. What did they expect when after we went out and elected Mr. Obama, and they

spent the following week and a half covering Palin, like she mattered.. AND now they seem to take every little lead and hash it out like its something of consequence. Most people realize, Obama doesn't take office until Jan, so what's the point of hashing out what people might do. When we start seeing what is or isn't happening, then is the time for talking about it.

Instead, they ought to spend time finding communities that are surviving the economic nightmare and looking at communities and companies that are doing the right things as a model for the future.. AND for goodness sakes, take the stock market bubble down. Looking at it like a ticking time bomb will eventually cause an explosion, I'm sure of it.. if anything it makes people really nervous.. and nervous nellies make things worse.